


A Little Bit Stupid

by duds



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Fluff, M/M, Oneshot, it's literally just a bunch of fluff, really really long paragraphs, weird extended metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 18:34:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15646545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duds/pseuds/duds
Summary: Arthur reflects upon his relationship with a certain stupid American.





	A Little Bit Stupid

Alfred is little bit stupid.

Correction: Alfred is very much stupid.

He pushes doors with the label "pull" and always waves his hands dramatically in front of automatic doors as they open before looking back at Arthur, grinning. He can't recognize Laos or Belgium on a map, and he always mixes up Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania. He mouths the words to his songs when listening to them, face morphing into the most ridiculous expressions, and dances along until Arthur finds him. He screams at the tiniest jump-scare in PG-13 movies and refuses to emerge from under the blanket under the bed afterwards, forcing Arthur to drag his head above their comforter and hug him until he falls asleep, Alfred's lips smiling slightly and hands balled into the fabric in the back of Arthur's pajamas. He kicks in the bed and has a nasty habit of starfish-spreading, leaving Arthur with only a sliver of space (the selfish _bastard_ ). Alfred always uses Arthur's chapstick without permission, prompting Arthur to refuse to use it from then on (“It’s unhygienic, Alfred.” “What the hell, dude, but we kiss all the time! You’re fine with that!” “But this is _different_.”) and give the rest of the chapstick to Alfred, and then Alfred loses it, only perpetuating the cycle. Alfred never folds his own laundry, instead leaving all his clothing, clean and dirty, in a few mysterious piles around the room before Arthur washes them all and mutters something about wasting water. Alfred can never properly wash dishes, breaking at least one every two weeks and whining that they should get a dishwasher. He takes Arthur's red pens apart, messing with the ink barrels until it looks as if he's murdered someone with his bare hands and losing the little pen springs so that the pens never click properly. He drags Arthur to the theater to see the latest Disney or Pixar or Disney Pixar movie but will never sit through anything that Arthur wants to watch, like documentaries about kings and queens and English soldiers with helmets and long pikes. He gets up at 11 on weekends and walks around the house with maroon pajama pants and an overly large NASA t-shirt for the rest of the day, munching on endless bags of Cheetos and Oreos. He sticks spoons into their ( _shared!_ ) Nutella jar and licks off the Nutella until Arthur shoos him off (“That’s disgusting!” “Your _face_ is disgusting! Lemme eat my Nutella, I know my rights!”). He buys useless trinkets off Amazon like Newton's Cradles and puts them on the bedside table, watching them clink endlessly against one another. He makes the most absurd cakes - bright neon orange cakes with glow-in-the-dark green frosting, because that exists for some reason - that taste like pure sugar and absolutely nothing else. He is the personification of all the things that annoy Arthur most - and then some.

And Arthur loves him.

Sure, Arthur can talk about all the cliché things, like how to him, Alfred's flaws and imperfections don't matter, and how he loves him anyway, and how, in his eyes, Alfred is absolutely perfect.

Or he can tell the truth.

Because love doesn't smooth over those faults or anything like that - you look all over for that elusive thing, _love_ , under the couch cushions and in the dust on top of the bookshelf and in that one kitchen cabinet you can't quite reach, thinking it to be a benevolent fairy with glowing pink wings or something, until one night when it sneaks up behind you as you sleep, hits you on the head and knocks you unconscious with a metal baseball bat, and stuffs you into a potato sack, and you wake up the next morning dizzy and confused with realization throbbing on the side of your head like an egg-shaped bump that hurts when you try to touch it and that you try to ignore with a couple of aspirin. And some people die with no egg-shaped bumps, some people can get a couple bumps in their lifetime that eventually fade, and a few live with such big hearts that they get lots and lots of painful bumps that never really fade.

Arthur supposed that he was somewhere in the middle of the road, but he knew for a fact that Alfred, the idiot, had cabinets full of aspirin. That was how Arthur first met him - as in, _really_ met him. They had mutual friends who introduced them, they may have exchanged a couple of words here and there for the sake of polite conversation, words they both promptly forgot, because yes, the music is alright, yes, the party is enjoyable, no, I haven’t seen that movie, a broken record dotted with small sips of cheap beer from red solo cups.

But that beautiful summer's day, when Arthur found Alfred sitting on the bench outside a restaurant, head in his hands and dried tear streaks on his face, the petals of his bouquet plucked and strewn around him, that was when he really met Alfred for the first time. And he'd bought a cone of ice cream for the boy, a scoop of Rocky Road and a scoop of cookies and cream with rainbow sprinkles on top because he just seemed like a rainbow sprinkles and cookies and cream and Rocky Road kind of person, and Alfred had opened up to the familiar stranger about the lovely young man who hadn't come to their 1:45 date and who came clean about his girlfriend at 2:17, according to the timestamp on his text messages. And Arthur saw that invisible egg-shaped lump on his forehead and knew that it wouldn't go away for a while, so he listened to the blond glasses-wearing boy on the bench with the bouquet of skeleton flowers.

And then they spent more and more time with one another, not just to be polite but because they made each other smile and laugh and think, and they went from familiar strangers to strange familiars. And then much later Arthur had asked him out to tea and Alfred had insisted upon coffee and they sat at a little table and Arthur admitted, blushing, that he didn't consider them to be friends while Alfred stared at him, pouring ludicrous amounts of sugar into his coffee, white powder sprinkled onto the brown tabletop, and then Alfred smiled and laughed and blushed and hugged him and knocked over the cup of coffee and swore and Arthur's shirt was stained brown and wet and stuck to his chest uncomfortably but Alfred draped his jacket over him, face red, and walked him home and Arthur figured it wasn't so bad. And some time later, Alfred took him to a park and they fed the ducks at the pond with little pieces of white bread and they talked and sang and insulted each other and laughed and then Alfred blushed and grabbed Arthur's face to press his lips against Arthur's for the first time and they crashed their noses together and it hurt like hell, but Arthur supposed that Alfred's cute little worried face made up for it. And some time after that, Arthur woke up in a potato sack with a throbbing forehead. And a much longer time after that, Arthur was okay with his egg-shaped lump, because Alfred had fallen in love with him long ago. And there were rings and rivers and stars in the sky and stars in his eyes and stars in their smiles and in every word that passed their lips and a flurry of fabric and suits and ties all lined up in one long laughing row, pristine and orderly yet grinning and chaotic and perhaps slightly hungover (on second thought, _definitely_ hungover), and the big stained glass windows and the golden light that kissed the two and clapping and bubbling champagne and laughter and a bouquet or two or three or nearly a million roses and flowers and wishes and claps and hugs from familiar strangers and from familiar laughing faces that they drowned in with happy smiles and, for some reason that no one could explain yet all understood, always more tears.

And Arthur loves Alfred now because Alfred makes Arthur stupid, and he knows that he makes Alfred stupid too, and they're stupid together in a stupid little way. Arthur loves Alfred because his smile makes Arthur feel dizzy and fuzzy and always, _always_ makes him stupid.

But in the end, all that matters is the wheat-colored head in his lap and the pink cheeks in his hands and the bright blue eyes grinning at him and the karaoke nights and the Nutella sauce kisses and the towels 'round necks like superhero capes and the partially used chapstick tubes found in that little crack behind the couch and the laughter, golden, bubbling up and up and out and everything is just so bright and beautiful and oh so _golden_.

Maybe Arthur is a little bit stupid, too.

Correction: Arthur is very much stupid.

**Author's Note:**

> So according to Google you can make glow in the dark frosting with tonic water? I dunno if it's true, it just sounds cool.


End file.
